Riverside CDR

[Kevin Bresnahan]

All VSOP CDs are now CD-Rs. I found this out when I ordered Danny D'Imperio's latest CD, The Upstate Burners - "Live at the Rum Keg Lounge" (http://www.amazon.com/The-Upstate-Burners-Live-Lounge/dp/B005P89E3G), paying very good money from Amazon, only to find out it was a cheap(er) CD-R. When I told Danny that this is what was happening, he bitched to VSOP and was told that this is what they were doing from here on out and that there was no problem with CD-Rs. Clueless idiots. I have backed it up to a hard drive as well as a 2nd CD-R (better quality). I have had quite a few cheap CD-Rs fail. One was Alan Grant's "Opening Night" with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. I laugh when I see how much people are paying on the secondary market for that CD-R.

[JSngry]

Oh, and I should have said right off - almost all CDr's have a label attached to the disc, rather than printed on the disc. Some silver CDs, like the recent Concords, also have that kind of label, though. But (someone correct me if I'm wrong) - any disc with text, logo, etc. printed directly onto the disc (with the silver disc showing through the blank spots) is almost certainly a real CD. All my "real" Documents have black type printed directly onto the disc; all my Document CDr's have black type on a white label which completely covers the top surface of the disc.

I've never tried it because the blanks cost more, and for what?, but you can buy blanks, burners, and software that will burn a design onto your blank.

Them lasers can rule the world, doncah' know.

[cih]

Oh, and I should have said right off - almost all CDr's have a label attached to the disc, rather than printed on the disc. Some silver CDs, like the recent Concords, also have that kind of label, though. But (someone correct me if I'm wrong) - any disc with text, logo, etc. printed directly onto the disc (with the silver disc showing through the blank spots) is almost certainly a real CD. All my "real" Documents have black type printed directly onto the disc; all my Document CDr's have black type on a white label which completely covers the top surface of the disc.

Though there are Document CDRs which are silver, not white - they abandoned the white ones because they looked bad (they thought that this was the chief problem with them, and that the closer they looked to the real thing the better!) - the silver ones generally have a pixelated Document logo on them, no track list on the disc itself, a black circular logo saying 'mcps', and generally (but not always) come with a slightly 're-designed' liner which has a serif font on the spine (for one thing).

Oh, and I should have said right off - almost all CDr's have a label attached to the disc, rather than printed on the disc. Some silver CDs, like the recent Concords, also have that kind of label, though. But (someone correct me if I'm wrong) - any disc with text, logo, etc. printed directly onto the disc (with the silver disc showing through the blank spots) is almost certainly a real CD. All my "real" Documents have black type printed directly onto the disc; all my Document CDr's have black type on a white label which completely covers the top surface of the disc.

I've never tried it because the blanks cost more, and for what?, but you can buy blanks, burners, and software that will burn a design onto your blank.

Them lasers can rule the world, doncah' know.

that is true - I would never let anyone operate on my corneas with a gramophone needle

[etherbored]

just out of curiosity, is the vsop + concord packaging that contain the cdr's standard jewelcases with booklet and inlay?

[jeffcrom]

just out of curiosity, is the vsop + concord packaging that contain the cdr's standard jewelcases with booklet and inlay?

Yes to the Concords.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

just out of curiosity, is the vsop + concord packaging that contain the cdr's standard jewelcases with booklet and inlay?

Yes to the VSOP discs too.

[bertrand]

Let me get this straight - if I order an OJC CD from Barnes And Noble (for example), it will probably be a CD-R, or do they still have leftover copies of the original OJCs?

Thanks,

Bertrand.

[jeffcrom]

Let me get this straight - if I order an OJC CD from Barnes And Noble (for example), it will probably be a CD-R, or do they still have leftover copies of the original OJCs?

Thanks,

Bertrand.

My guess, based on my experiences, is that the odds are good that you will get a real CD - but if it's a title that they have recently repressed, it'll probably be a CDr. Which I guess is my way saying there's no telling until you get it.

At my local brick-and-mortar store, as in many stores, the price tag has the date the store received the CD. I've stopped buying Concord CDs if the date is newer than mid-2012.

[AllenLowe]

Jeff - wrong about the label/no label thing. Technology to print directly on the CDR has existed for at least 15 years, and it's pretty decent, and better than a label - and labels cause probablems because their weight, and the tendency to imbalance the CD - so that is not a good way to determine the difference.

as for the difference itself, I can always tell; and if they try, on Amazon, to sell me a CDR as a CD, I copy it and return it. This is so (deliberately) unethical that I feel no obligation to do otherwise.

[jeffcrom]

Yes, I've already been corrected on this issue above.

[AllenLowe]

sorry.

[jeffcrom]

sorry.

No problem. And thanks to Stefan, I'm now listening to a "real" CD of Jackie Mac's Lights Out.

[P.L.M]

Does it sound better?

[jeffcrom]

Does it sound better?

Nope, but it's liable to last longer.

[xybert]

My copy of Dexter Gordon's More Power! that i received today is a CDR. Prestige/OJC. T80-VG-5 on the inner ring of the CDR as jeffcrom noted in post #14. At first i was gutted, then i got over it, now i'm kind of annoyed again, as it sits in my collection in a weird, impure way.

I ordered it from a New Zealand website called Fishpond, which i have on good authority just orders on your behalf from Amazon sellers and then forwards them on. Sounds pointless but you can usually save a few bucks (i'm not sure how the arrangement is profitable, but anyway. Have ordered from them tons of times before and never had a CDR turn up). On the website listing for this item it says ''ships from UK supplier'' so i don't know which seller is selling, but i'm not sure that it matters. No indication of CDR on the listing.

[bertrand]

So if the number on the ring starts with the prefix 'DIDX', is that a CD or CD-R?

Bertrand.

[erwbol]

So if the number on the ring starts with the prefix 'DIDX', is that a CD or CD-R?

Bertrand.

My guess is the discs with 'DIDX' are real CDs, but I'm also interested in knowing this for certain.

[mikeweil]

I have plenty DIDX CDs which I boought way before there were CDRs ... IIRC it was a international code or numbering system for CD masters meant to be used the world over, but was abandoned.

[mikeweil]

Well, not quite: look here: http://www.keithhirsch.com/japan-for-us-am-cds-with-didx-and-didz-numbers

• DIDP: Digital Identification Project; DIDP numbers were used on CBS/Sony rock, pop, and jazz titles.
• DIDC: Digital Identification Classical; DIDC numbers were used on CBS/Sony classical titles.
• DIDX: Digital Identification External; DIDX numbers were used on non-CBS/Sony titles.
• DIDZ: The definition of the ‘Z’ is unknown, but DIDZ numbers were used on non-CBS/Sony titles as an alternative to DIDX numbers.
• DIDY: The definition of the ‘Y’ is unknown, but DIDY numbers were used on Columbia Record Club mail-order issues.

[bertrand]

Interesting.

I looked at a few OJCs - the earlier ones did not have DIDX, but the later ones did.

I just ordered three OJCs through Amazon - a Richie Cole and two Johnny Lytles. They are all DID-X. I have one more Lytle on the way, fulfilled by Newbury Comics.

Bertrand.

[bertrand]

OK, just got a copy of Lonnie Smith's Move Your Hand from Deep Discount which sure looks like a CDr - the cover and insert looks like it was a Xerox copy, the label on the CD is black, not blue, and the packaging looks flimsy in general - the booklet doesn't even quite fit in the case.

Was the original flimsy like this? I doubt it.

Amazon also had this, marked as a CDr on their website. Deep discount did not label it as a CDr. Has anyone gotten CDrs from Deep Discount that were not advertised as such, and if so, did you contact them to complain? I will shoot them an e-mail later.

Bertrand.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

did fantasy really sign off on this?

[Kevin Bresnahan]

I had a Billy Harper Fan Club CD-R fail on me. It was Billy's "The Believer". I never backed it up (forgot that it was a CD-R) and went to play it the other day and none of my players would recognize the disc. An e-mail to the fan club asking for a replacement was met with "Sorry, can't do it". Of course, they no longer sell CDs, so that might have something to do with it. But still, selling CD-Rs in the first place sucks.

If anyone buys one of these CD-Rs, make sure you back it up digitally. You never know.

[AllenLowe]

it's sleazy how many are seling cdrs and photocpies these days; it's happened to me but now I know who's doing it and avoid them - tend to be the big sellers - what I do if I get one is copy it and return the original.

you can buy a GOOD cdr blank for .25 each; and they use crappy CDRs and charge $15. On my blues thing I charge $3.50 each for the CDRs, and that's shipped; add packaging and nobody should charge more than maybe 6 or 7 bucks.

[psu_13]

In theory CD-R should be much much less permanent than pressed CDs because while normal CDs store the bits physically in the disk itself, the data on a CD-R is encoded in a dye layer that fades over time.

OTOH, the permanence of even actual CDs is somewhat suspect. I've had at least one disk in a 20 year old Mosaic set (Art Blakey, RIP) become unreadable, and many of my older CDs show strange discolorations and other effects, although the data still seems readable.

I would say that if you are concerned about permanence you should rip every CD you buy and back up the files in at least 2 or 3 places.